What happened
The Justice Department is preparing to seek an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey as early as today, multiple news organizations reported last night. President Donald Trump’s newly installed acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, former White House aide Lindsey Halligan, was reportedly racing to secure criminal charges against Comey, for allegedly lying to Congress, before a key statute of limitations runs out next Tuesday. The previous U.S. attorney, Erik Siebert, resigned under pressure last week after declining to charge Comey or another Trump target, New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Who said what
Halligan — “who has never prosecuted a criminal case in her career as an insurance lawyer — plans to present evidence to a grand jury,” ABC News said, even after prosecutors presented her with a “detailed memo recommending that she decline” to charge Comey due to “insufficient evidence.”
Comey oversaw the initial 2016 investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, and Trump has “long viewed him as a nemesis and urged aides to find ways to extract payback,” The Wall Street Journal said. The president’s recent “unabashed demand” that Attorney General Pam Bondi bring charges against Comey, “even as she has expressed reservations about the case,” has “put her in a bind” and “alarmed” current and former DOJ officials who worried that Trump’s fundamental transformation of the department “into an arm of his agenda” will damage its “credibility in ways that will be difficult to repair.”
What next?
A grand jury in Virginia “would have to approve any indictment,” a typically “low bar” the Trump Justice Department has failed to clear several times in recent months, The Associated Press said. There is “no guarantee the grand jury will determine that the government has met the evidentiary threshold” to indict Comey, The New York Times said, or even that “a career prosecutor would be willing to present the case to the grand jury,” leaving it to Halligan or another DOJ official.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Executions are on the rise in the US after years of declineThe Explainer This year has brought the highest number of executions in a decade
-
Political cartoons for November 17Cartoons Monday’s political cartoons include narco-terrorist boats, Jeffrey Epstein's island, Cop30, and more
-
Sheikh Hasina: why ousted Bangladesh PM has been sentenced to deathThe Explainer The country’s longest-serving leader spearheaded a ‘ruthless, state-led crackdown’ of protestors in 2024, and faces extradition from India
-
How are these Epstein files so damaging to Trump?TODAY'S BIG QUESTION As Republicans and Democrats release dueling tranches of Epstein-related documents, the White House finds itself caught in a mess partially of its own making
-
Will California tax its billionaires?Talking Points A proposed one-time levy would shore up education and Medicaid
-
Trump DOJ sues to block California redistrictingSpeed Read California’s new congressional map was drawn by Democrats to flip Republican-held House seats
-
GOP retreats from shutdown deal payout provisionSpeed Read Senators are distancing themselves from a controversial provision in the new government funding package
-
Catholic bishops rebuke Trump on immigrationSpeed Read ‘We feel compelled’ to ‘raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity,’ the bishops said
-
House releases Epstein emails referencing TrumpSpeed Read The emails suggest Trump knew more about Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage women than he has claimed
-
A free speech debate is raging over sign language at the White HouseTalking Points The administration has been accused of excluding deaf Americans from press briefings
-
Newsom slams Trump’s climate denial at COP30speed read Trump, who has called climate change a ‘hoax,’ declined to send any officials to this week’s summit
